PHILADELPHIA — If you were searching for some point-form explanations for why the Maple Leafs have transformed themselves from a truck going off a cliff to a formidable rig rumbling down the road to playoff contention, your notes would read something like this, in order of importance.

1. Goaltending.

2. Penalty killing.

That does a lot to sum up Toronto’s 12 wins in its opening 20 games, the latest of which came by the score of 4-2 in Philadelphia on Monday night.

On a night when Toronto goalie Ben Scrivens ran his win-loss record to 6-5 by stopping 23 of 25 shots, the Leafs continued their impressive play with a man disadvantage by thwarting five of six Philadelphia power plays.

Not that James van Riemsdyk needed to test the limits of his team’s man-short savviness. Van Riemsdyk picked up a pair of minor penalties with a little less than nine minutes remaining in the game. Up until that point the Maple Leafs were happily trundling along, leading 3-1 and leaving the usually lively crowd in a disappointed coma.

Then van Riemsdyk was whistled for hooking and holding in the same lamentable shift. Then Flyers forward Jake Voracek scored some 24 seconds into the first penalty to make it 3-2, this on a shot that appeared to deflect off a net-front stick. And suddenly the Leafs were facing another home power play with more than eight minutes left in regulation.

But Toronto didn’t panic. The penalty kill held fast. And soon enough Jay McClement was buryng an empty netter to give Toronto the 4-2 lead with 13 seconds to go.

All that was left was doling out the credit.

Leafs coach Randy Carlyle handed some of it to assistant coach Scott Gordon, who handles the penalty-kill scheming.

“We tried to reinforce some of the staples we had from the previous year,” Carlyle said.

The previous year, of course, shouldn’t be spoken of, since the Leafs finished 28th in the league in the category with Gordon having a hand in the show. The year before that they ranked 28th. The year before that they were 30th. So clearly it’s more than the guy doodling on the whiteboard.

“I think the people who are on it are doing a much better job,” Carlyle acknowledged. “They’re much more comfortable. Jay McClement’s been big. Tyler Bozak, he starts every PK with a faceoff. Kulemin replaces Bozak as soon as the puck is cleared. Then we come back and we’ve van Riemsdyk and Komarov. And now we’ve tried to integrate Steckel. Bozak will come back with Steckel—that’s our third pair. And Phil (Kessel) usually takes the guy coming out of the box.”

After giving up nine man-short goals in their first 10 games, the Leafs have now allowed just three in their past 10. During the most recent 10-game stretch they’ve gone 34 for 37 on the kill, a 92 per cent rate; perhaps it’s no coincidence that their win-loss record is 7-3.

“It’s a credit to the players. Penalty killing is more about sacrificing and hard work,” Carlyle said. “You’ve got to outwork the opposition’s power play.”

So while the Leafs came into the game having surrendered 30-plus shots in seven of their past eight games, Carlyle spent the lead-up to the evening criticizing “the doom and gloom that’s sometimes associated with shots.” They were outshot 25-21 on Monday night and still got the two points.

“We worry about the quality of scoring changes,” Carlyle said. “If we can keep the opposition to 10 and under, that’s our goal. In our last game (a 3-2 loss in Ottawa on Saturday) we gave up 12, so we were two over our mandate ... (But) I don’t think our defensive record is that poor.”

Their road record, now 8-4, is stellar — although Monday night felt more like a home victory. The Wells Fargo Center, despite a reputation as a lively joint, was Air Canada Centre quiet. As a result, at least one pre-game storyline never really materialized. Van Riemsdyk, making his first return to Philadelphia since he was traded to the Leafs for Luke Schenn in June, speculated that he might not be greeted warmly. But there was very little venom spilt for the man they call JVR, or for anyone. Had the Flyers scored a second power play goal in that tense third-period stretch, van Riemsdyk would have felt Carlyle’s.

Certainly Toronto’s establishment of an early lead didn’t do much to buoy local spirits; it had been a much-discussed matter on local sports radio that the Flyers came into the contest with an 0-7 win-loss record in games in which they trailed after the first period.

Phil Kessel gave Toronto a 1-0 lead with a few minutes remaining in the opening frame, beating Kimmo Timonen in a sprint for a puck sliding slowly near the Flyers’ right faceoff circle, then calmly sliding one along the ice past Philadelphia goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov.

If Bryzgalov didn’t look sharp on that shot, he didn’t look much better when Nikolai Kulemin used a backhand to make it 2-0 Leafs with about five minutes to go in the second period.

There was at least a touch of buzz in the building when Philly’s Scott Hartnell scored his first goal of the season with 2:04 left in the second frame—this after some dubious defensive coverage on a Philadelphia rush allowed Jakub Voracek an unobstructed lane to lay a tape-to-tape pass on Hartnell’s point-blank stick. Still, the Leafs had been 9-1 with a second-period lead this season. They improved to 10-1 after Scrivens stopped 9 of 10 third-period shots. His save percentage of .928 is a notch better than Toronto’s team save percentage of .927, which is third best in the league so far this season. If you know anything about Leafs goaltending, you know it’s been at or near the bottom of the league for most of the previous handful of seasons.

So it’s been goaltending, penalty killing, and a pleasant amount of winning. And only 28 more games to keep it up.